We were lucky to catch up with Kallie Cheves recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kallie, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

“Embedded Stars from Sifted Scars” is an installation amidst memory-loss and absence. This artwork explores how the mind escapes the body and latches to physical places through the transience of experiences stitched into planted memories. Bridging installation and text, these pieces center around subject-matter that is drenched in the breaking and healing of familial relationships stemming from dementia but also sources of abandonment.

This multi-media installation was featured in the exhibition curated by Kristy Masten, titled Boundless: Storytelling in Texas Book Arts at UTSA’s Main Art Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. The installation is birthed from visuals sparked by the text of my new picture-book, also titled “Embedded Stars from Sifted Scars”. Morphing family folklore into a story that processes memory-loss grief and absence through symbology, doodle bugs (antlions) and hummingbird moths help a family member with dementia share their memories with their relatives. In this showcase, I offer a textural space for viewers to sit and read the text and absorb the elements through the senses.

In this work, a large constructed photograph stretches the wall, blending different moments together, while a back-lit moon encrusted in transparent photographs lights up a midnight-ombre sky. Sprouting from the floor are 2 doodle-bug antlion mounds, and a large 10-foot headless rattlesnake stretching across the floor. Text from my folktale lights up along the scales of the rattlesnake’s back, pulsing in red heartbeats of color. Inside each pit within the antlion mounds contain a photographic paper & silk antlion sculpture, able to be handled and moved by the viewer. Overhead, mobile motors spin giant photographic paper & silk humming-bird hawkmoth sculptures in clusters of flight, creating a spiritual presence as they cast shadows and interact with one another.

The concepts present in this piece are abstract enough to allow for interpretation and network a diverse set of backgrounds, most poignant because memory-loss and absence is a universally-experienced trauma. These pieces activate an individual viewer with introspective reflection and a group of viewers with intrapersonal reflections. Through investigative exploring, viewers reveal different questions and images that invoke ruminations.

Kallie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a mother, artist, and art educator who lives in Bulverde, Texas with my husband and 2 sons. I received by B.A. in Studio Art from Trinity University and my M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio. I have exhibited my artwork extensively in Texas, nationally, and in Cork, Ireland. My art involves photographic installations that hold deep roots in surrealism. I also write and illustrate picture books using hand-cut photographic paper. I enjoy weaving science with myth and lore to encourage social-emotional conversations between people.

Currently, I am most inspired in exploring medieval bestiaries. I am fascinated to connect with creatures that fancied the minds of artists 500 years ago. I am excited to merge my research with bending the conventions of photography in even more extreme sculptural ways.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Every artist creates the work their soul demands in the journey of healing. Art generates empathy, stitching bonds between people, forging a joint perspective in the quest of understanding.

Throughout my artistic career, I have always been drawn to thinking more about how memories are built and experienced. Lately, as I adjust into motherhood and consider my legacy, I have been interested in researching memory-loss. Reflecting on my work, I realize that my focus on creating works about memory-loss really parallels my direct connection to familial absence. There are a lot of similarities between both memory-loss and absence, primarily centering around the lack of control around the conditions that fragment the family unit. My goal and mission driving my creative journey is to supply a healing space for others in the community who also experience this type of grief, and offer strings of connection to both those who left and those who remain.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society can better support artists who are caregivers and educators. Many opportunities currently exist for artists to participate in residencies all around the world, however most of them accommodate artists who are able to travel any time of the year and excluding children and spouses from joining. So many practicing artists have families, financially supporting them through teaching.

Artist residencies serve as such a precious time supporting the growth of an artist’s voice, however the creative community should consider the voices that are omitted by the limits drawn in the foraging of new work. To support a thriving, creative ecosystem, the best thing our civilization can do is encourage the making of more art and draw new systems that reflect artists of all family backgrounds and professions.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kalliecheves.com
• Instagram: @kalliecheves @bestiarytherapist
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kallie-cheves-94657141

Image Credits
Photographs by Kallie Cheves.